Groklaw to continue under new management

Further to the original announcement that Groklaw articles were to end on May 16th 2011, Pamela Jones (aka. Groklaw founder, ‘PJ’) has listened to the many readers of her popular blog, and decided not to close down, but instead to hand over the Groklaw reins to previous Red Hat general councel, lawyer and law professor, Mark Webbink.

“I announced in April that as of today, I wouldn’t be writing any more articles for Groklaw. I intended to finish the Comes v. Microsoft exhibits as text and perfect some of our other collections and then I would retire from Groklaw, knowing as I did that the research we have done together will remain useful no matter what happens in the future.

I was immediately bombarded with messages asking me to keep the community going or to tell you where to assemble elsewhere. A lot of you asked me to at least keep News Picks going. Groklaw is all of us, not just me, and I have always taken your input as seriously as you would expect me to. So I thought about it, and I realized you are right. I would be irresponsible not to try to leave Groklaw in someone’s hands who could keep things going. The community is what makes Groklaw of real value, and it’s a FOSS community resource that we built together. Our prior art searching, for example, turned out to be truly useful, and in one case it won the case.

So I thought about who would be the right person.Now that the battlefield has shifted from SCO attacking Linux to Microsoft using patents against it and from servers to mobiles, I realized that Groklaw needs a lawyer at the helm. So I asked Mark Webbink if he would take on this role, and I’m thrilled to tell you that he has accepted. He is the new editor of Groklaw as of today. Mark was General Counsel at Red Hat, as you know, and he is on the board of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is also a law professor, which as I’ll explain is a vital piece of what he has planned.”

She goes on to say…

“I know he will make Groklaw the place to go to when you want to understand the law and all things FOSS.

I know, of course, that you’ll miss me. Vice versa. But the truth is, I’ll be around, just not burdened with the daily chores of writing articles. I need time for other things, and some time to relax. I’ll continue to contribute to News Picks, for example. I just won’t be the only one. I’ve worked so hard on a daily basis for eight years, pretty much in emergency mode, that I want time to live a more normal life. Mark might ask me to write an article here and there, but that’s up to him, but I’ll be here helping with the transition and I’m sure I’ll be commenting and interacting with you that way.

Mark understood Groklaw very early on. If you recall, he let us publish some of his articles. I trust him. I like his vision for Groklaw very much. What he has in mind to do is to include his law students, asking them to write articles for Groklaw too, for credit. So you won’t lose out on anything, as far as learning the legal process. In fact, it’ll be better, because Mark is a lawyer, so he knows many things I don’t.”

Here’s hoping that Groklaw 2.0 (as ‘PJ’ calls it) continues the good work well into the future with Mark Webbink at the helm.

Just when you thought it was safe to dump all your MySQL tools, switch SQLAdministrator for RoboMongo and dump ApachePHP for Node.js, it appears someone has thrown a thumping great spanner into the works!